Ruth Rosen

Professor Emerita, HistoryUniversity of California, DavisExpertise: Gender and Public Policy; Political Culture and Social Movements

Ruth Rosen is a pioneering historian of gender and society and an award-winning journalist.

She is Professor Emerita of History at the University of California at Davis, where she taught American history, women's history, history and public policy, and immigration studies for over two decades. The recipient of the University of California Distinguished Teaching Award and many national fellowships, including two from the Rockefeller Foundation, she has lectured all over the world and was a visiting professor at the European Peace University in Austria and Ireland and at the U.C. Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy.

She is the editor of the The Maimie Papers, a New York Times Notable Book in 1978; and the author of The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America (1982); and The World Split Open: How The Modern Women's Movement Changed America (2001), a Book of the Month and Quality Paperback Selection; Los Angeles Times Best Books published in 2000; Finalist for Non-Fiction Award for Bay Area Reviewers Association

As a journalist, she wrote hundreds of op-ed columns for the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers between 1991-2000 and contributed many essays to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dissent, the Women's Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times Book Review.

In 2000, she joined the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board and wrote both editorials and twice-a-week columns on the op-ed page. For her distinguished journalism, she received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the East Bay Press Club, the National Association for the Mentally Ill, the California Public Health Association, the National Federation of Women Legislators, and the Hearst Corporation.

Her editorials and columns focused on a broad range of subjects, including foreign policy, homelessness; the politics of health care, space-based weapons and the missile defense system; the politics of parole and prisons, reproductive rights, and environmental health. Until she left in 2004, she wrote extensively on the Bush administration's politicization of science, its violations of civil rights and liberties through the PATRIOT ACT, constraints on FOIA, and the Presidential Records Act, and the deceptions that led to the war in Iraq.

She is now a senior fellow writing and speaking about how we would change, reframe and rethink domestic and global public policy if women really mattered.

Accustomed to writing and speaking to the general public, she has appeared on NewsHour, NBC News, Fox News and hundreds of NPR and commercial radio programs.

The real story of this presidential election is the widening Marriage Gap — the difference between how married and unmarried women vote — and what the presidential candidates have or have not done to mobilize the 22 million women who simply didn't bother to vote in 2000.

The outcome of the 2004 presidential election rests in the hands of single women, argues senior fellow and noted historian Ruth Rosen. This column originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on February 16, 2004.

If you think its about sexual prowess, you’d be wrong. If you think it’s about size, forget it. And if you imagine we follow the various pissing contests going on among male liberals, you’re too self-absorbed. It’s about what I call the Care Crisis.

The abortion referendum in South Dakota is only one of the neglected issues affecting the daily lives of American women, minorities and working families, says Ruth Rosen in an article originally published at opendemocracy.net.

In The San Francisco Chronicle, Ruth Rosen praises Ellen Bravo's Taking On the Big Boys: Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business, and the Nation. "Bravo's book," Rosen writes, "is such an enjoyable and accessible read it just might galvanize general readers to put the problems faced by working women on the national public agenda."

At tomdispatch.com, Ruth Rosen traces the Bush administration's many attempts to suppress information in the name of national security and reminds us how much we have already lost due to secrecy and deception.

Horrible as the abuse and torture of Iraqi men has been, Ruth Rosen writes on Tomdispatch.com, many Iraqi women have suffered both physical and sexual violence. Because of the military's guilt and the victims' shame, these crimes against women often go unreported.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Ruth Rosen praises Reese Erlich, author of The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis, as a "truth teller" who predicted the harsh consequences of war with Iraq before it began. His new book, Rosen writes, "can help readers understand why Iran and the United States may - or may not - soon be involved in yet another war."

The September issue of the Journal of American history, (published by the Organization of American Historians), has reprinted an interchange, titled Genres of History in which Rockridge's Ruth Rosen and five other historians discuss how they educate the public about the past through films, novels, and opinion essays.
In addition, Dr. Rosen, who worked as an historical advisor on the Oakland Museum's current exhibit: What’s Going On?--California and the Vietnam Era , will speak at a panel titled The Sociological Roots and Legacies of Discontent and Change on Sunday, Oct. 17th at the Oakland Museum of California.

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